Month: November 2010

Projection Much?

by digby

I’m fairly sure this fellow thinks he’s the Tea Party’s Stephen Colbert. He’s posing in the Washington Post as a “Hollywood Liberal” giving advice to the Tea party on how they can beat back the liberal onslaught and the corrupt GOP:

1) Principles, not programs. Stick to your guns: lower taxes, less regulation, less government. Imitate your hero, Reagan (Ronnie, not Tommy) and leave the social issues alone; after all, if you win, they’ll take care of themselves. Do not get into the weeds with us: as the products of prep schools, think tanks, the Ivy League and Morning Joe, we know everything there is to know about programs except why we should have them in the first place.

2) Treat us with the same respect with which we treat you, which is none. Our “fairness” mask slipped away some time during Bush’s second term, to reveal the absolute contempt in which we hold you. We are angry, unhappy people, at once at war with God, truth, justice, the American Way, and pretty much the entire Constitution, so why should we give you suckers an even break? We think lawyers are the solution to all life’s problems, since there’s always gotta be an angle somewhere, whereas you think God, four aces and a loaded .45 will pretty much see you through any eventuality, including us.

But, of course, you won’t. Your basic desire to beat your swords into plowshares and go back home to Cincinnati always takes over. Your appetite for the Fight – and, as Hillary Rodham entitled her Wellesley Alinskian thesis, “There is only the fight” – will wane.

Your innate craving to be loved instead of feared will kick back in and before you know it, John Boehner will be slapping Barney Frank on the back and heading off on a fact-finding junket together to Chris Dodd’s Countrywide-financed “cottage” in County Galway. By the time BO2 heads into the primaries against Evan Bayh and Dennis Kucinich, the entire RINO caucus will be cheering him on – anybody but Sarah!!

It’s written in the stars: Betelgeuse, to be specific. Because you’re never dead until you’re buried, and even then…

I don’t know about you but he just made me feel a whole lot better. Liberals are badass! Hoo-ah!

That’s not an excerpt by the way. That’s it. Why the Washington Post thought that was fit to publish I don’t know — the whole Evan Bayh, Dennis Kucinich RINO conspiracy is mind bogglingly weird — but there it is. I guess it just shows how darned lonely it is to be a teabagger in these troubled times.

Keep the faith kids. I promise we won’t be too hard on you in those FEMA camps. Because you’re never dead until you’re buried … uh, whatever.

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Foul Systemic Corruption

by digby

I know that it’s impolite to point fingers and all, but this piece at Down with Tyranny about the systemic corruption of our political system, in this case involving the Democraqtic Party, is just astonishing. The problem isn’t that what he describes is unusually bad — it’s that it’s so common that people inside the beltway don’t even see anything wrong with it. No matter how strong a person’s convictions and sense of integrity may be there is no way to do this kind of thing without being tainted.

He opens by talking about the depressing news that Pelosi chose Steve Israel to head the DCCC:

Until 2 years ago the conservative Suffolk County congressman was a member of the Blue Dog Caucus. He’s the epitome of the DLC/Third Way hack. The Washington Post describes him as someone who “joined the Blue Dog Democrats in the House and crossed party lines to support President George W. Bush on a number of key issues, most notably Bush’s 2001 tax cut package [one of only 28 mostly right wing Democrats who did] and the GOP prescription drug bill the following year. He has also espoused more hawkish views on foreign policy, voting to authorize military force in Iraq.”

I’ve been working on a DCCC investigation since September and, just by coincidence I ran across an interesting relationship I wasn’t aware of– or looking for– one between top DCCC operatives John Lapp, Jon Vogel and… Steve Israel. And now they’ll all be together again, just like they were when they all worked on Israel’s first congressional campaign in 2000 to win the seat being vacated by hapless Long Island Congressman Rick Lazio. Although I tried contacting every DCCC source I know for my story– from out-going chair Chris Van Hollen and incoming chair Steve Israel to Lapp and Vogel, the only person who would speak to me on the record– and only partially on the record as a matter of fact– was Jon Vogel. Vogel played the role of DCCC Executive Director this year. He assured me that “all our decisions were based on polling with the strategy of winning a Democratic Majority… We were working off a poll that gave us an instrument that tested different ways that we could move numbers in a district.” I kind of wish I could have gotten Lapp on the phone instead (or at least as well)– a mere senior advisor to the I.E. committee– but he didn’t want to talk. I can understand why.

First off, I need to say that I don’t really care that what I’ve found is standard operating procedure for the NRCC, the DSCC and the NRSC and that “this is the way it’s always done Inside the Beltway.” I sincerely hope Republicans and like-minded insiders choke on their own corruption, and I’ll leave it to right-wing bloggers, who are already onto the trail, to work it out for themselves. This is about the DCCC. More specifically, it’s about the systemic corruption inside the committee and how they allocate money and where that money goes. Maybe “corruption” is too strong of a word. Maybe. “Devoid of ethics” might be a fairer description.

Insiders who work both sides of the system may not be strong arming candidates to buy particular services. Indeed, they may not even mention it. But then anyone who wasn’t born yesterday knows that you don’t have to. Any savvy politician will figure that it’s a good idea to suck up to the people who allocate the money, right? Nobody has to say a word.

And now they are going to try to do a repeat of 2006 with a Blue Dog conservative chairing the congressional campaign committee. And people will make a lot of money doing it. A win’s a win, and the best bet is to pick a wealthy, corporate friendly Democrat who travels in the right circles and can guarantee that the system keeps rolling.

This is the stuff that just makes me want to give up. It’s one thing to fight the good fight against the authoritarians and the theocrats and the warmongers. But when you think about the vast sums of money that are corrupting the system at every single opening and choke point, it becomes very difficult to keep up any kind of hope that this isn’t going to just go from very bad to unthinkable.

Read the whole post. It’s a great piece of investigative work by Howie Klein. As he notes, Republican activists are on the same story implicating their political operations. It’s not a partisan problem and the Democrats are probably less corrupt than the GOP — after all, they are the ones who openly insist that money equals God, mother and apple pie. But with a system dependent on huge, smothering piles of cash it’s inevitable that this sort of thing will corrupt everyone eventually. And so it has.

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Imagine Your Son Or Daughter Is A Soldier In Afghanistan And…

by tristero

…imagine reading this. Jeebus, what a pack of amateurs.

I’d be doing anything I could to get my child home before s/he gets killed.

And why is the United States over there, again?

Devil’s Grand Bargain

by digby

I don’t know if the following is cover for Obama to do what he wants to do already or if it’s just thuggish behavior designed to bend him to their will, but it really doesn’t matter does it? It’s the biggest load of lies that any PR shop has ever manufactured and the Politico willingly carries it’s fetid water without even questioning its assumptions:

After business leaders sank millions into the midterms to defeat Democrats, a chastened Obama administration is seeking reconciliation with the corporate community.

But after two years of building frustration, the executives say they won’t be won over by another round of private lunches and photo opportunities at the White House.
If President Barack Obama has any hope for a truce with corporate America in time for his 2012 reelection campaign, he needs to drop the name-calling, try to see their point of view better and step up with some specific proposals.

“No amount of relationship-building is a substitute for policy,” said Johanna Schneider, executive director for external affairs at the Business Roundtable, which was once one of the administration’s most enduring corporate allies.

“We have to see some concrete policies that will help grow business because everyone’s goal is to grow jobs. This isn’t hocus-pocus. There are concrete steps to take for job growth,” she added.

Right. Because business is really hurting. Here’s the NY Times from just this morning:

The nation’s workers may be struggling, but American companies just had their best quarter ever.

American businesses earned profits at an annual rate of $1.66 trillion in the third quarter, according to a Commerce Department report released Tuesday. That is the highest figure recorded since the government began keeping track over 60 years ago, at least in nominal or non-inflation-adjusted terms.

Corporate profits have been going gangbusters for a while. Since their cyclical low in the fourth quarter of 2008, profits have grown for seven consecutive quarters, at some of the fastest rates in history…

“The economy is not growing fast enough to reduce significantly the unemployment rate or to prevent a slide into deflation,” Paul Dales, a United States economist for Capital Economics, wrote in a note to clients. “This is unlikely to change in 2011 or 2012.”

Meanwhile, back in the Village:

The White House’s relationship with the corporate world has always had a sort of Mars-Venus quality to it. Business leaders say Obama simply doesn’t get them and has no one in the White House with corporate experience or who is steeped in the daily challenges of operating in a global economy. It didn’t help when Obama lashed out at “fat cat bankers” on Wall Street at the height of the regulatory reform effort or attacked BP, a onetime White House ally on energy reform, in the midst of the Louisiana oil spill.

The message to other sectors: “You could be next,” said one corporate lobbyist.

Some White House officials, in turn, privately express frustration that the business world seems to give Obama no credit for supporting bailouts of Wall Street and the auto industry as well as an economic stimulus bill that likely spared the country a deeper recession. Many CEOs now are enjoying hefty corporate profits and a Dow at healthy levels in part because of Obama’s efforts in steering the economy through the global meltdown, administration officials contend.

Sure, they may be making record profits and cleaning up like a bunch of rapacious vultures while the rest of the country spirals into economic despair but he said something mean about them! They’re scared! They’re uncertain!

Yes, that may be so silly as to merit derisive belly laughs from any sentient being, but we are talking about the Politico here:

But the stakes for Obama couldn’t be higher, economically or politically, in rebuilding relations. Cooperation with the business community is vital for job growth and economic recovery. Expanding trade and cutting the deficit, two other Obama priorities, will require Republican votes — which the business community could deliver.

Yeah, business is going to deliver Republican votes for Obama on trade deals and the deficit. I have serious doubts that Republicans will need to be “delivered” on some job destroying trade deals or tax cuts and those are going to be the only deals that might come to the table. (And I don’t know if anyone can deliver a free trade deal right now.)But business doesn’t deliver Republicans. It is Republicans. They are not “honest brokers” or mediators. That’s just laughable.

The article goes on to name a few picayune policy disagreements in the Finance reform bill that allegedly account for this estrangement and doesn’t even mention the fact that these Big Money Boyz are all whining like a bunch of five year olds over having to pay a little bit more in taxes on the the billions they’re making at the expense of average workers. The piece credulously states that Obama has been anti-business when the truth is that he saved their asses when they didn’t deserve it. (When will Democrats learn that no good deed for greedheads and wingnuts goes unpunished?)

The fact is that these businessmen believe they should be worshiped like Gods and they get very cranky when they are treated like ordinary mortals and subjected to the same scrutiny and criticism to which other elites are subjected. They are America’s big winners and it’s simply not acceptable that they be held accountable for … well, anything.

More importantly, they rightly understand that if they can take advantage of this situation and punish the Democrats for their mild criticism, they can guarantee that that CEOs and Master of the Universe will never personally be held responsible for anything they do going forward and will be guaranteed the right to gobble as much profit as they can and give back as little as humanly possible.

Is this a great country (for rich people) or what?

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Authentic Hero

by digby

If you haven’t seen this segment with Michael Moore and insurance company whistle-blower Wendel Potter take the time. to do it. It’s a rare moment of authentic, unscripted television discussing a very creepy episode of corporate thuggery.

“Sicko” was instrumental in opening people’s minds to the necessity for health care reform. I think it’s Moore’s best film and I can understand why the insurance industry was afraid of it. (They did find other ingenious ways of emasculating the reforms, as we well know.)

Moore calls Potter the Daniel Ellsberg of the insurance industry and he is. The sad thing is that America is so cynical and disillusioned already that it isn’t at all shocked by what he had to say.

*transcripts are here

Security Theater

by digby

A lot of people, including Jeffrey Goldberg on Keith Olbermann last night, have said that one of the reasons El Al doesn’t use these airport procedures is because the long lines present a target so they like to move people through quickly. But this raises a question that’s been driving me nuts for years. I get why Islamic suicide bombers pick airplanes, especially if they can target a national airline — it’s an excellent way for them to dramatically kill a whole bunch of infidels and make a political statement against the west. But after 9/11, why would they use this method if they were already in the US? There are literally thousands of places where a suicide bomber could cause widespread panic here without having to go anywhere near an airport. There would be no need to smuggle anything in your underwear or your shoes — any determined person could find enough explosives in this country to make a bomb without having to go through even one “lovepat” to get it.

Doesn’t it seem logical that the danger in airplanes these days comes from overseas airports and that the greater danger for Americans is in other gathering places — few of which can effectively be stopped through these methods? Once they instituted metal detectors and random searches and put lots of people in uniforms watching passengers closely in the boarding process at American airports, terrorists surely realized that there were better targets elsewhere.

It’s not like the they haven’t shown that they are creative enough to do something other than blowing up an airplane to make their point. Look at the London and Madrid subway bombings or the Mumbai operation or that horrible Chechen school hostage taking. In fact, law enforcement here in the US has caught a bunch of losers plotting non-airplane related bombings without making us get stripped searched every time more than a hundred people are gathered in the same place.

It’s certainly possible that one day an Islamic terrorist is going to kill a lot of people in America again. But it’s almost certain they will do it somewhere other than a passenger airplane. If it’s in a shopping center, will they then make us all go through scanners at the mall if we want to buy a pair of shoes? If they blow up an office building will every worker in America be subject to frisking?

That’s why this is security theater. We are chasing phantoms by pretending that if we stop people from carrying a bottle of shampoo on an airplane that we are safe. If you are so scared of terrorism that you’re willing to throw logic out the window and subject yourself to ever more irrational safety procedures for no good reason, you’d better think twice about ever leaving your house. That, of course, is exactly the point of terrorism. And authoritarian police states.

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Koch’s Armey

by digby

In case anyone has been confused about the agenda of the billionaires backing the Tea party, this should put it to rest once for all. It’s a shakedown:

Jesse Jackson isn’t the only activist that can use corporate boycotts for political purposes. Starting next year, the huge Tea Party organizer FreedomWorks will urge supporters to punish huge corporations like General Electric and Johnson and Johnson for backing President Obama’s progressive agenda.

In an exclusive review for Whispers of their plan, FreedomWorks president Matt Kibbe says: “Tea Party activists are willing to tackle progressive CEOs just as they tackled progressive politicians. Judging by the results of the midterm elections, progressive CEOs should buckle up, because Tea Party activists are going to give them a very bumpy ride.”

His project partner, Tom Borelli, director of the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project, added: “Big businesses are now on notice that there is a measurable business risk for actively supporting the Obama, Reid, and Pelosi progressive public policy agenda.”

Their initial focus will be on consumer firms that lobbied for passage of Obama’s agenda items that helped their firms. “We are going after the rent-seeking corporations feeding at the public trough,” said FreedomWorks’ spokesman Adam Brandon.

The groups released a new Wilson Research Strategies poll to Whispers which shows how companies could suffer when conservatives are told of their support for Obama’s agenda. The poll found that when customers are told of a consumer product firm’s support for healthcare reform, bailouts, cap-and-trade energy policies or other issues pushed by the administration, their favorability among conservatives plummets.

The clever part of this is that they will frame this as a “clean government” initiative, to root out corrupt alliances between the Democrats and their corporate masters. And Democrats, who are concerned about such things as well will be unlikely to defend these corporations. Indeed, we will be helping to punish them, for all the right reasons.

However, the billionaires who are funding this effort are seeking to strong arm all of corporate America into backing its partisan agenda (even against its own self-interest) and therefore they will not go after such “rent-seekers” as defense contractors or other K-Street allies. And if they win a majority, they will institutionalize their own relationships with Big Business as a partisan enterprise in a way that makes the K-Street Project look like amateur hour.

In the age of the Roberts Court and Citizens United I think this is their big play.

Recall:

While the Koch brothers — each worth over $21.5 billion — have certainly underwritten much of the right, their hidden coordination with other big business money has gone largely unnoticed. ThinkProgress has obtained a memo outlining the details of the last Koch gathering held in June of this year. The memo, along with an attendee list of about 210 people, shows the titans of industry — from health insurance companies, oil executives, Wall Street investors, and real estate tycoons — working together with conservative journalists and Republican operatives to plan the 2010 election, as well as ongoing conservative efforts through 2012. According to the memo, David Chavern, the number two at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Fox News hate-talker Glenn Beck also met with these representatives of the corporate elite. In an election season with the most undisclosed secret corporate giving since the Watergate-era, the memo sheds light on the symbiotic relationship between extremely profitable, multi-billion dollar corporations and much of the conservative infrastructure. The memo describes the prospective corporate donors as “investors,” and it makes clear that many of the Republican operatives managing shadowy, undisclosed fronts running attack ads against Democrats were involved in the Koch’s election-planning event:

– Corporate “investors” at the Koch meeting included businesses with a strong profit motive in rolling back President Obama’s enacted reforms. Several companies impacted by health reform, including Allan Hubbard of A & E Industries, a manufacturer of medical devices and Judson Green, a board member of health insurance conglomerate Aon, were present at the meeting. Other businessmen at the meeting, like Omaha Burger King franchiser Mike Simmonds, are owners of fast food stores which have fought efforts to provide health insurance to their employees. Many corporate attendees of the meeting represent the financial industry impacted by Wall Street reform. For instance, attendee Bill Cooper is the CEO of TCF Financial, a corporation involved in the mortgage banking industry. Cooper recently filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Wall Street reform. Other financial industry players in the meeting hail from firms ranging from Bank of America, JLM Investment, Allied Capital Corp, AMG National Trust, the Blackstone Group and Citadel Investment. Annie Dickerson, a representative of Paul Singer, a powerful hedge fund manager who also gives tens of millions to Republican causes, was present. In addition, Koch Industries itself has a hedge fund and other financial derivative products in its portfolio of interests, which include oil pipelines, coal shipping, asphalt, refineries, consumer goods, timber, ranching, and chemicals.

– Corporate “investors” at the Koch meeting included businesses with a strong profit motive in preventing progressive reforms promised by President Obama. Several executives at the meeting have an incentive to stop Democrats and President Obama from addressing climate change and enacting clean energy reform. The meeting included oil executives from Aspect Energy, Murfin Drilling, Anschutz Company, GeoPark Holdings, Smoky Oil, and several members of Koch’s various subsidiaries. The meeting documents explicitly state that funding efforts to curb “climate change alarmism” were discussed.

– Fred Malek, Karl Rove’s top fundraiser for his $56 million attack ad campaign against Democrats, attended the meeting, along with leaders of other secret attack groups. Heather Higgins, who leads the Independent Women’s Forum, a shadowy group that has spent millions of dollars in attack ads on health reform, attended the meeting. So did Gretchen Hamel, a former Bush flak who now runs an attack ad group called “Public Notice,” which denounces spending programs.

– Participants collaborated with infamous consultants who specialize in generating fake grassroots movements, as well as experts on how corporations should take advantage of Citizens United. One session, about how to “mobilize citizens for November,” involved a discussion with Republican strategists Tim Phillips and Sean Noble, anti-union leader Mark Mix, and longtime Koch operative Karl Crow. Phillips — a veteran astroturf lobbyist who previously managed a deceptive grassroots lobbying campaign to help the Hong Kong-based Tan family maintain their forced abortion sweatshops in the Mariana Islands — now leads the day-to-day operations of Americans for Prosperity, the group ThinkProgress first reported to have helped organize many of the initial Tea Party rallies against Obama. Americans for Prosperity, founded and financed by David Koch, has a field team of over 80 campaign staffers spread out around the country, and additionally plans to spend $45 million dollars worth of attack ads against Democrats. Shortly before the planning meeting, Crow authored a campaign finance memo explaining that because of the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling, he advised specifically that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s 501(c)(6) and Americans for Prosperity’s 501(c)(4) can “now use general treasury funds to produce communications materials opposing or supporting specific candidates” and corporations can aggressively pressure their employees to vote a certain way.

The memo notes that participants in the 2010 election planning meeting “committed to an unprecedented level of support.”

It isn’t just business folk invited to this exclusive little confab. The right wing media are well represented as well, for obvious reasons.

This is the invitation to the next event, to be held in Rancho Mirage in January.

I think Dick’s army might be overestimating the clout of the Tea Party when it comes to boycotting major businesses (although it could have an impact on advertisers.) But these businesses aren’t really committed to politics, they’re committed to profits, and I would expect that we’ll see some interesting interplay on this.

They have to move fast. The Tea Party will not be motivated to do this unless it is in the name of “stopping the Obama agenda.” The money guys are probably counting on Obama pulling it out in 2012, thus giving them six full years to make this happen, but just in case he doesn’t they need to get as much of this done as they can before he leaves office. The Tea Party is very likely to lose its identity if the Republicans take over the White House. (They are, after all, nothing more than reconstituted 28 percenters and they’ll be back to this kind of thing in no time.) So it’s best to put the screws to the few stray progressive capitalists out there, if only to demonstrate what will happen if any of the rest of them stray from the reservation.

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“Shut Up. You’re Getting A Paycheck”

by digby

Speaking of FOX News, I think this article by Media Matters’ Sarah Pavlus puts to rest any notion that they are going to be pressured into changing their ways because it’s widely believed that they are employing dangerous, insane demagogues:

Is Murdoch out of touch with what is happening at his own network? Is his defense and praise of Beck an accident? That seems unlikely, given that he views the network as the jewel of his empire. When asked earlier this week by Fox Business’ Liz Claman what News Corp.’s best growth market is, Murdoch said, “Our best growth engine right now is in this country.” When Claman pressed for specifics, Murdoch immediately responded, “Fox Business. Fox News. Seriously.” Murdoch has quite consciously pushed Beck to the forefront at Fox News, and with him the type of paranoid, incendiary rhetoric and wild inaccuracies with which some Fox journalists are growing increasingly uncomfortable…
Kurtz, now with The Daily Beast, reported that Ailes offered a “spirited defense” of Beck in the wake of his recent attacks on Soros, and that Ailes had even reached out to the Anti-Defamation League — one of the groups that condemned Beck’s “puppet master” series — to smooth things over. In fact, according to Kurtz’s interview, Ailes’ only real gripe with Beck seems to be that Beck criticizes Republicans too much. Ailes told Kurtz: “Beck trashes Republicans every night. I’ve said to him, ‘Where the hell are you going to get your audience if you keep this up? You’re trashing everyone.'” Kurtz added: “There’s one criticism that Ailes doesn’t want to hear. He admonished the staff after unnamed Fox journalists told me they are worried that the divisive Beck is becoming the face of the network. ‘Yeah, shut up,’ says Ailes. ‘You’re getting a paycheck. Go on the team or get off the team. Don’t run around here badmouthing a colleague.'”

This is the same guy who called NPR Nazis.

This is how it works in Randian hell world where the workers aren’t “citizens” they are parasites who are “getting a paycheck.” It’s a little bit startling to see it played out in a Media corporation,what with our archaic traditions about the press and democracy and all, but I think we are all adjusting just fine to our new reality where money equals speech and the wealthy are just a little bit better than the rest of us do to their superior “productivity.”

Having said that, what’s really interesting about this is the fact that Murdoch is obviously Beck’s protector and that he sees Fox News as his best growth product. Considering that he owns half the world’s media, that’s fairly alarming. Just what does he have in mind?

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Resenting Their Way To The Top

by digby

Jay Rosen is doing some fascinating short YouTube lectures on his thesis about the modern press. This one is particularly on point, I think:

Resentment #

On Fox, the news exists in order to generate controversy. And controversy exists in order to generate resentment. And the resentment is what generates ratings. So this is my most concise idea about Fox: we should consider it “resentment news.” I think that’s the genre in which it trades… Resentment of whom? Well, a cultural elite that is corrupt and maneuvering behind the scenes to exercise power.

Myth #

Resentment of the cultural elite as a recurring theme in news puts me in mind of something that the critic Roland Barthes—a Frenchman—said about myth. Myth in the sense of a kind of ideological narrative that motivates people to particpate in politics and engages their emotions. And what Barthes said is: “many signifiers, one signified…” Or to put it another way: many stories—every night there’s new stories on Fox—one narrative that endures. Many provocations, one lesson. The liberals, the cultural elite, are at it again. And this is the essence of myth: that no matter what happens, the story remains the same, [which] is one reason the whole notion of Fox as a news channel is a little dubious: because nothing ever changes in Foxland.

I think this is correct and as he notes, it goes back all the way. (I’ve written a lot about this over the years in posts such as Resenntimental Journey Part 1/Part 2 and Resentment Tribe.) Perhaps it’s baked in the human cake, but there’s something special about the US that stems from its original division over slavery that have made one of our socio-political cultures particularly prone to this phenomenon.

It’s a fascinating thing to watch people whose entire identities are built on a false sense of victimization come to power. Perhaps creepy and frightening is a better way of putting it.

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Kitka Perform Music From The Origin

by tristero

Normally, I don’t write about my music here, but I thought you might be interested to know that I’ve just released a mini-cd of excerpts from The Origin, my evening long celebration of the work and life of Charles Darwin. You can download it from iTunes or order a cd directly from me (if you say you saw this post, I’ll sign it for you for free: just let me know to whom I should address it to).

The excerpts on the CD were written for the amazing female Balkan ensemble Kitka, based in Berkeley, CA. The texts are taken from Darwin’s autobiography, notes, and letters (and in one instance, from his wife’s letters). Unlike the rest of the piece, which deals with Charles’ science, all these pieces are concerned with Charles’ life.

No, I don’t know why I decided to “cast” Charles as a group of women with a background in Balkan folk song, either! But from the moment I first heard Kitka rehearse this music, I felt certain it was the perfect choice. If nothing else, it helps us get away from the stereotypical images of Darwin as the quintessential old, upper-class British twit. Yes, Charles was upper class and British, but he was a young kid – perhaps 29 or 30, or even younger – when he began to formulate the theory of evolution by natural selection, not the old man with the sad eyes who’s the iconic Darwin. And Charles was no twit: he loved to party, was quite popular, and had a great sense of humor. His love of life and his abundant playfulness come through in all his work and writings – from the most personal to the most scientific.

The women of Kitka immediately connected to this droll side of Charles, as you’ll find in all their performances here. They also understood his deeply poignant side. Here, in a shortened version of one of the pieces, Annie’s Memorial, Kitka portray a father overwhelmed with grief from the tragic loss of his daughter:

What I hear in Kitka’s portrayal of Darwin is a portrait of a complicated, sensitive, and profoundly great human being – and that, of course, is who Charles Darwin was. It makes me think that perhaps my choice to cross genders – not to mention the English Channel and quite a bit of land! – wasn’t so strange after all…

I hope you enjoy listening to this music as much as I did composing it.
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